The search for Bobby Fischer just got a whole lot easier

[Mahdi]

Since he's been, ya know, found.

From the Canadian Press:

*****************************

Search for Bobby Fischer ends at Japanese airport; fugitive chess king caught

12:30

July 16, 2004, EST

TOKYO (AP)

It wasn't a smart move.

After decades of evading the public eye and U.S. justice officials, former world champion Bobby Fischer - possibly the best and certainly the most eccentric chess player ever - has been taken into custody by Japanese immigration after allegedly trying to leave the country with an invalid passport.

Fischer, 61, was detained at Narita Airport outside Tokyo while trying to board a Japan Airlines flight for the Philippines on Tuesday. The U.S. Embassy confirmed Fischer was detained.

Fischer is wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 chess match in the former Yugoslavia in violation of international sanctions. Japan and the United States have an extradition treaty.

But Fischer's detention - and a possible handover to U.S. authorities - gives Japan a chance to show it is co-operating with the United States just days before Japanese officials plan to bring an accused U.S. army deserter, Charles Robert Jenkins, to Tokyo for urgent medical treatment.

Jenkins, whose Japanese wife was kidnapped by North Korea in 1978 and returned home in 2002, is wanted by Washington on desertion charges for allegedly defecting to North Korea in 1965. Jenkins is suffering from problems following abdominal surgery in North Korea.

Miyoko Watai, a longtime friend of Fischer's, told The Associated Press she had talked to him in custody. She said he was told he would be deported, but was planning to appeal.

"He didn't know that his passport had been revoked," said Watai, a member of the Japan Chess Association. "He had been travelling frequently over the past 10 years, and there was never a problem. I don't understand why his passport was revoked all of a sudden."

Considered by many to be the best player ever, Fischer became a grandmaster at age 15.

He became a Cold War hero in 1972 when he defeated Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union at a widely followed series of matches in Reykjavik, Iceland, to become the first American world chess champion.

The event was seen as having tremendous symbolic importance, pitting the intensely individualistic young American against a product of the grim and soulless Soviet Union.

But it also was marked by Fischer's odd behaviour - either eccentricities or calculated psychological warfare against Spassky - that ranged from arriving two days late to complaining about the lighting, TV cameras, the spectators, even the shine on the table.

He forfeited the title in 1975, refusing to play when conditions that he demanded proved unacceptable to the International Chess Federation. He resurfaced for a dramatic rematch against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992, beating him 10-5 to win $3.35 million US.

After that, the fiercely private Fischer disappeared, living in secret outside the United States.

The U.S. government accused Fischer of violating UN sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing the match. The sanctions were placed on Yugoslavia during president Slobodan Milosevic's era as a punishment for the country's role in more than a decade of Balkan bloodshed.

While incognito, Fischer intermittently gave interviews with a radio station in the Philippines.

In the interviews, he praised the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and accused U.S. officials of hounding him. He often digressed into anti-Jewish rants, even though his mother was Jewish.

He also announced that he had abandoned chess in 1996 and launched a new version in Argentina, "Fischerandom," a computerized shuffler that randomly distributes chess pieces on the back row of the chess board at the start of each game. Fischer claimed it would bring the fun back into the game and rid it of cheats.

Alexander Roshal, member of executive committee of the Russian Chess Federation and chief editor of chess magazine 64, said he had "mixed emotions" about the former world champion.

"On the one hand, Fischer is a tough, notorious and quarrelsome person, but on the other hand he is a chess genius and contributed so much for the development of chess."

"He is a pathologically perverted anti-Semite, which is strange knowing his origin, and I suspect he is not appreciated in America. But on the other hand, he has done so much good for the country and was the only American to defeat the Soviet grandmaster."

Watai said Fischer could be stubborn.

"He was like a child," she said. "Chess had been his whole life, so he was sheltered from the world in some ways. Once he made up his mind, he would never change it, no matter what anyone said. That didn't always make people happy."

Fischer had long been rumoured to be living in Japan, aided and sheltered by chess devotees, and is believed to have frequented a Tokyo chess club.

"He came here often for short stays," said Watai. "He also travelled to the Philippines, Germany, Switzerland and many places."

Filipino Grandmaster Eugene Torre said Fischer had been planning to seek political asylum in Switzerland and was caught off guard by the arrest.

"Poor Bobby," he said.

ERIC TALMADGE

The Canadian Press, 2003

[lowzeewee]

So what? They gonna kill him for playing an "illegal" chess match? :O

[Lord J]

So what? They gonna kill him for playing an "illegal" chess match? :O

  I doubt it, we're not savages you know.. ;)

[DukeLeto]

So they've been hunting a man for twelve years for something that's not even illegal any more?

[nemafakei]

So US citizens are subject to UN rules, are they? So long as they start acting consistently on that basis, fair enough. Looks like The Hague's budget might need a little increase...

[Vanguard3000]

I've read so many articles in the Sun/Citizen/Rogers.com about this.  Each one began with some stupid ass line like "Game over, Bobby" or "check and mate!"

Regardless of whether or not it;s still illegal, it was illegal at the time he committed the crime, frivolous as it may seem.  Plus, he evaded the police for so long.

[nemafakei]

Well, if you read The sun, what do you expect. I don't know about any of the others, mind.

[Vanguard3000]

Normally, I don't read the Sun, which is about as trashy as it seems to be over there.  The thing is, where I work on Saturdays, they do.  Reading everything in sight is usually the only thing that keeps me busy during my Saturday shifts, and if I exclusively read the book I bring along, I'd be finished it long before I got a chance to get another one.  I also bring along my copy of the Ottawa Citizen.